Ecological footprint

Ecological footprint (EF), measure of the demands made by a person or group of people on global natural resources. It has become one of the most widely used measures of humanity’s effect upon the environment and has been used to highlight both the apparent unsustainability of current practices and the inequalities in resource consumption between and within countries.

The ecological footprint (EF) estimates the biologically productive land and sea area needed to provide the renewable resources that a population consumes and to absorb the wastes it generates—using prevailing technology and resource-management practices—rather than trying to determine how many people a given land area or the entire planet can support. It measures the requirements for productive areas (croplands, grazing lands for animal products, forested areas to produce wood products, marine areas for fisheries, built-up land for housing and infrastructure, and forested land needed to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption). One can estimate the EF, measured in “global hectares” (gha), at various scales—for individuals, regions, countries, and humanity as a whole. (One hectare equals 2.47 acres.) The resulting figures can also be compared with how much productive area—or biocapacity—is available.

Canadian ecologist William Rees created the EF concept, which Swiss urban planner Mathis Wackernagel further developed in his dissertation under Rees’s supervision. Together, Wackernagel and Rees wrote Our Ecological Footprint (1996), which describes the concept.

EF calculations have questioned the sustainability and equity of current consumption and production practices. The Global Footprint Network (GFN)—a nonprofit organization that partnered with hundreds of cities, businesses, and other entities to advance the EF as a metric of sustainability—calculates the per capita global footprint. In 2014 the per capita global footprint was 2.8 gha. Since global biocapacity that year was 1.7 gha per person, the EF of humanity overshot Earth’s biocapacity by 1.1 gha. In other words, 1.7 “Earths” would be needed to sustain current resource demands or, alternatively, it takes Earth more than one year and eight months to regenerate what is used in one year. The implication of such “ecological overshoot,” which began in the mid-1970s, is that life-supporting biological resources, such as fisheries, forest resources, rangeland, and agricultural land, are being depleted.

Using the EF

EF analysis can show whether a country is living within the biocapacity of its own territory or whether it is an “ecological debtor,” drawing on the ecological “capital” of other parts of the world. Per capita EFs show a wide divergence in the demands on nature from people in different societies, ranging from Qatar at the high end (15.5 gha/person) to Haiti at the low end (0.7), with the United States (8.4), Germany (5.1), China (3.7), and others in between (2014 data). These figures are the basis of claims such that if all of humanity consumed like the average American, about five Earths would be needed. EFs also vary greatly within countries according to level of affluence.

Researchers have combined footprint analysis with measures of human development to assess whether countries are on track toward sustainable development—defined as a per capita EF lower than the available per capita biocapacity with a high rating (above 0.8) on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). (The HDI is a metric that combines a country’s average life expectancy, educational attainment, and income into a measure of economic and social progress.)

Environmental educators and activists have used the EF to raise awareness of unsustainable consumption patterns, often with the goal of encouraging a change in lifestyles and, less frequently, to promote awareness of wider structural forces driving such patterns. Many online footprint calculators have appeared on nongovernmental organization Web sites with such goals in mind. Those calculators allow people to calculate their personal EF and to make comparisons with estimates of available biocapacity or to average footprints of other people locally and globally. Meanwhile, social scientists have used the EF as a comprehensive indicator of the ecological impacts of humans on the planet in order to test empirically different social theories of the forces driving those impacts.

Although EF analysis can lead to a radical critique of the current economic and social order, it has found increasing mainstream acceptance among businesses and governments. Multinational corporations such as Wal-Mart and BP introduced programs to shrink their EFs, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development began exploring pathways toward achieving a “one-planet economy” by 2050. A number of national governments—such as those of Wales, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the European Union as a whole—as well as metropolitan areas have also considered or embraced the concept.

Critiques of the EF

Despite its rapid ascent and widespread use, the EF has faced a wide range of criticism. One of the EF’s attractions is that it provides a single aggregate indicator of ecological impacts. However, such aggregation requires simplification of a complex reality; for example, an assumption built into the EF is that technology is the same across the globe and through time. Critics also argue that the EF methodology rewards more-intensive production methods that increase yields per unit of land in the short term but might actually be less sustainable in the long run—for example, accelerating land degradation. Similarly, organic farming methods with lower yields than conventional agriculture could appear to have a bigger footprint despite other ecological benefits. Others argue that EF analysis is overly anthropocentric, focusing only on land and sea area that is useful to the human economy and failing to allocate space for the needs of other species. Indeed, the EF does not measure changes in biodiversity, for which other indicators are needed. EF advocates acknowledge that it cannot include all significant environmental impacts, given the lack of data for some issues and the difficulty of converting some types of ecological demands, for which no regenerative capacity exists, into a measure of land area. Among the key impacts not reflected in the EF are those related to toxic substances, greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, and water consumption.

Some critics also object to what they perceive to be the implication that a country’s population ought to live within the biocapacity of its own territory and not draw on outside resources through trade. For example, small, densely populated areas may be very ecologically efficient but will almost inevitably be ecological debtors drawing on outside resources, while large, sparsely populated countries such as Canada and Australia appear to be living well within their territories’ ecological means even though their per capita footprints (at 8.3 and approximately 7.0, respectively, for 2014) are among the highest in the world.

Proponents of the EF have acknowledged some of the concept’s limitations and have worked to refine it. The first set of standards for proper calculation and communication of the EF was produced in 2006, and continual revisions are occurring. A review in 2008 produced for the European Commission concluded that, although complementary sustainability indicators and further improvements in data quality and methodology are needed, the EF is a useful indicator of sustainable natural resource use that is easy to communicate and understand.